


Rocky Shores

by Perspicacia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, JediFest, roguerobin, roguerobin032, round 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 05:44:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacia/pseuds/Perspicacia
Summary: The world stopped making sense for Barriss when Master Unduli joined the Force. And now, she has a new Master, the Negotiator himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Rocky Shores](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/280968) by dogmatix, norcumi. 



> Entry for jedifest RogueRobin, on tumblr, on the round 2 continuing the work of dogmatix and norcumi. You really should read their wonderful work before reading that one.
> 
> With great patience aeremaee came to my help to play beta and rescue me from english grammar, many many thanks ^^

_Things Barriss Offee learned since she left the Creche to become Master Unduli’s Padawan:_

1)It’s traditional for Jedi issued from Mirial to take other Mirialan as their Padawans since the first Mirial recorded in the Order, something that the Council still frowns upon but don’t try to change anymore because a star will run out of fuel before opposition swayed Mirialan’s opinion.

 

2) Unduli still chose her and only her. There were three other Mirialans in the creche in the same time, two almost of age to be chosen. Master Unduli had come into the creche one day, going from room to room, observing the young ones, speaking with everybody but not stopping, correcting a kata here, helping a little Wookie with his mathematics, because the Force won’t help you calculate your route in hyperspace when the astromech is out, rolling up her sleeves to help the Creche Master with the youngest’s baths. And then, in the last room, she had found Barriss and her age-mates, busy with open-handed katas under a junior Knight’s watch.

“There you are, Padawan,” she had said. “I was searching for you. What is your name?” Barriss hadn’t gone back to her dorm, leaving all her possessions to be distributed to the youngest.

 

3)Master Uduli was a great sword, a great mind, a great soul, a shining daughter of the Force. She was wise beyond her years, an active strength in the war against darkness and she always tried her best to preserve her men’s lives, never asking of them what she wouldn’t do herself.

 

4)And the last thing Barriss learned: even Jedi can die and no sword, mind, soul, can stop that very simple fact.

 

_Things Barriss Offee learned since she became Master Kenobi’s Padawan after her first Master’s death:_

1)If you lose Master Kenobi on a battlefield, follow the sound of explosions. Even in the dampest swamp planets under raging rains, her new Master’s presence seems sufficient for things to catch fire and the blasts are just behind.

 

2)Pirates can be allies, too. Even when they seem as unsavoury as this Hondo character that tried to convince her to join her crew and then propositioned something to her new Master that she was sure was an offer to either join a harem or either to start one together. But smart Jedi don’t drink anything those allies offer and the ship better be locked or some parts will go missing.

 

3)The world stopped making sense when Master Unduli joined the Force and Master Kenobi, seat on the Council or not, is just part of this madness.

 

* * *

 

Yes, the world had stopped making sense, the galaxy tearing itself apart and no matter how fast, hard-working, sacrificing the Jedi were or forced themselves to be, it was only getting worse.

Even now, in her small quarter in the Negotiator, everything seemed unreal. Barriss Offee felt disconnected, absent, and nothing helped. She had received notice that two more of her age-mates had been killed, one in a crash, the other one in battle; and it was at the end of an already long day, where a supposed abandoned CSI outpost had revealed itself full of battle droids.

“Barriss?”

That was Ahsoka, limping, a bacta patch put on her montrals. Barriss wasn’t sure she wanted to talk right now when she had spent the last hour trying to meditate without great success, but she knew how Togruta were when their montrals were covered and hurt. She was just in time to stop her fellow Padawan from walking into the door.

“There. Sit down. I will give you water.”

“No, I can…”

“Let me.”

Ahsoka took the glass, using her two hands, proving she probably would have broken something if she had tried something so simple herself.

“Aren’t you supposed to stay in the infirmary when your montrals are hurt?”

“Well…Master Kenobi was still here. Force suggestion is great to put soldiers with severe burns under before the medic and the droids have time for them.”

“I should go help him.”

“He was just staying to be sure nobody would wake up too fast. And then my Master came and I left.”

“I see.”

Anakin Skywalker was supposed to be her brother in lineage now, but since she had come to Master Kenobi’s tutelage, the young Knight seemed to find only defects in her acts and in his former Master’s actions. Barriss would even call that jealousy, if jealousy was the Jedi way.

His apprenticeship was finished!

He wasn’t supposed to be angry to share Master Kenobi!

He wasn’t supposed to be _attached_ to Master Kenobi!  

And she had admired him before, she had thought that she would learn from him, too. After the first time he had yelled at her, and then at Master Kenobi when the older man had risen to her defence, things had gone well for a few days - as well as they could in the present circumstances - until another mission where Barriss had chosen to follow Ahsoka against orders. The bridge she was supposed to protect had gone down and they had lost twenty clones. Ahsoka hadn’t needed her help; when Barriss had arrived the other Padawan had the information secure, the droids protecting it sliced neatly. Since then, the climate was frosty.

Barriss apparently couldn’t do right anymore. Obeying orders, defying them, and it always ended in blood. The Force wasn’t big enough to release her weariness into.

“Perhaps I’m not made for this. Perhaps the Agricorps…” She didn’t finish and let Ahsoka’s clumsy petting on her traditional headdress put her to sleep, her chest tight.

* * *

 

“I tried speaking to Sky…to my Master,” Ahsoka said in the dead of the night, her hands firmly tightened around her tea. “But I think this is hurting more than helping. Perhaps she would have been better in the Temple, with the other orphan padawans. You would never have taken her without my prompting and now this is hurting her,” she carried on.

“…”

“Master Kenobi?”

“Sorry, sorry Ahsoka. It’s a complicated task to meddle in the bond between Master and Padawan but you can’t judge so fast. I will never be Barriss’ first Master but, from my experience, Master and apprentice pairings that start difficult can grow strong. My own Master and I had a hard time at our beginning, but we still grew until we were quite an effective team, if I do say so myself.”

She looked at him, her gaze surprised. He never talked about Master Qui-Gon Jin, a legend now in the Temple, the first victim of this war in a way. It was strange to imagine Master Kenobi young, as young as her and Barriss.

He pushed the plate with the sugary treats closer to her.

“I won’t make empty promises but I will do my best for Barriss. She could grow to be a magnificent Knight, your friend, and I won’t let my particular teaching style become an obstacle.”

“That’s not what I wanted to say, Master.”

He smiled at her and stole a treat. She didn’t like when he was like that and she tried to force him out of his mood.

“How did things get better between you and my great-grand-master?”

“Well…there were dragons,” and he started a tale that was, she suspected, heavily edited for her sake, but he succeeded in making her laugh. Even laughing, she didn’t miss that look in his eyes: Master Kenobi was scheming.

 

* * *

 

 

When the Force gave Barriss and Master Kenobi what would be one of the most difficult missions of their partnership, it would have been strange to think of this as a kindness. The Council, having first selected Obi-Wan Kenobi for that mission, had finally proposed to elect another Master for it, on account of his new Padawan.

“She can’t lose another Master,” Mace Windu had remarked.

“No,” had said the Master that had once been Qui-Gon’s Padawan. “Of course not. But in the underworld, we should find a profile more practical for us than Rako Hardeen. I’m taking Barris with me. I think this is exactly what we need. Like Qui-Gon and me on Bandomeer against Xanatos.”

“You won’t fight any Darksider,” Adi Gallia had remarked. “And I’m pretty sure no Padawan of yours has Fallen to the Darkside like Du Crion did.”

“No, but we will only have each other, like my Master and I did in the mines. Now every time something is not working perfectly smoothly on the first try between young Barriss and I, Anakin is ready to yell and Ahsoka ready to interfere. They mean well but this is not helping. Of course, since we’re telling Barriss, it would probably be better if we tell Anakin too.”

“He’s not that great of an actor.”

“If he thinks his sister-Padawan is my only backup? Believe me, he will appear distressed enough.”

Yes, that mission would be difficult and more than once, he would think that they would soon join the Force and Luminara. However, this would prove to be the mission that would force the first Mirialan Jedi training under a human Master and said human Master to rely on each other so much that their partnership would forge itself under pressure. This would prove the mission where Anakin Skywalker learned that he could rely on other Jedi to take care of those he loved, like he had relied on Barriss to help his former Master.

And it started like this: in the quarters of Master Kenobi in the Temple, looking at the holos of two humans, the man bulky and with a leer that would make the most serene Jedi uncomfortable and a younger figure, with a big scar, a leather helmet and pilot goggles.

“Meet Breerne Merrol and his sister Briotess,” explained Master Kenobi. “Mandalorian bounty hunters. He’s the muscle and she is the brain, as far as we can tell. Ex-members of Death Watch. They have been excluded from it for excessive violence.”

“How can you be excluded from _Death Watch_ for that?” asked a very surprised Master Skywalker and Barriss, for once, was exactly of the same opinion.

“Better not to ask, my friend, because the answer would possibly even disturb a Hutt.”

“Are we supposed to track them?” Barriss asked, trying to contribute.

“In a way. You see, Barriss, they are the one that will track us. Because two days ago, they accepted a contract on me… Anakin, control yourself, would you? I happen to like that table.”

“We will protect you!” swore Ahsoka.

“No, no. You don’t see, young ones: tonight, the siblings will win their bounty in murdering a Jedi Master. Sadly, his Padawan will get caught in the melee and die too. Your role will be to apprehend them just after.”

Under their dazed gaze, he smiled.

“And then, former Padawan of mine, and grand-Padawan, you’ll have the pleasure to put Barriss and me behind bars.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm super-papagei-universe, come and visit me!


End file.
